Martha Is Dead’s creeping tale of identity, murder and malevolent spirits lets the player experience both the sun-soaked Tuscany and the chilling woods of Luca’s nightmares.

When you are a local and you walk in those beautiful forests it’s very difficult not to remember that a lot of people died in those same woods.”

In the ‘70s and ‘80s, we had one of the most infamous serial killers in the whole of Italy – if not the whole of Europe. “Globally, Tuscany is famous for its beauty – its tourism,” explains Luca, “Yet in Italy, Tuscany is also famous for its unorthodox dark stories. While we all know that childhood imagination can run rampant, it turns out, there was some truth to young Luca’s fearful instincts. Sharing the forgotten realities and stories of people who lived there, this skin-crawling first-person tale explores the contrast between the idyllic Tuscany the world sees, and the darker reality lurking beneath the surface.

Set in Tuscany during the second World War, Martha Is Dead aims to show the picturesque region in an entirely new light. “You’re making me think now that this probably caused me a little trauma,” Luca Dalco, creative director at LKA games reflects with a laugh, “The game’s beauty in the days and the horrors at night is probably connected to my experience as a child sleeping there – It’s actually the first time I’ve ever thought about it…” It’s fair to say that this experience stayed with Luca, as 40 years later, that same house is the setting for his psychological horror game, Martha Is Dead.

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Try as Luca might to calm himself, panic coursed through his veins like blood, and every night he’d wake in a cold sweat. Peering out of his bedroom window, he’d stare in horror as trees in the graveyard opposite swayed like demonic hands in the wind. Whisked away from the bustling city of Rome once a year, the ominously silent Tuscan hills filled him with dread. When Luca Dalco visited Tuscany in the summer as a child, he found himself utterly terrified.

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